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The 25 lone children who survived the dramatic Mediterranean shipwreck caught on camera Wednesday are among more than 5,700 unaccompanied minors to arrive in Italy by sea this year.

The triple-fold increase from the same period of 2015 has European intelligence agencies and aid workers concerned that pan-European organised crime gangs may be targeting vulnerable migrant minors.

“Last year nearly 10,000 lone children went missing in Europe,” said Save the Children’s Gemma Parkin. “No-one knows where these children are today.”

It comes as the Italian Coast Guard revealed that 1900 migrants were rescued on Friday in 16 different rescue operations.

Migrants are seen on a capsizing boat before a rescue operationCredit:
Italian Navy

Fayed, 17, (not his real name) was one of the 25 minors on capsized boat. He told aid workers in Porto Empedocle he left Marrakech to seek a better future in Europe. He crossed the Algerian desert in three days before arriving in Libya, where he worked as a tile layer for a month without pay. He did not tell his mother, fearing she would worry, but while in Libya befriended four other minors from Morocco and 10 adults, all of whom were with him on the capsized boat, and all of whom are missing.

“Some say they left Libya with around 600 people, while others say there were more than 700 aboard,” said Save the Children’s Giovanna Di Benedetto told the Telegraph from Porto Empedocle.

According to survivor’s accounts, people from many nationalities were traveling in three different boat sections: the hold below deck, the intermediate deck and the upper deck.

In photos and video released by the Italian Navy, hundreds can be seen jumping and falling from the upper decks as the boat begins to tilt into the sea. More than 500 people were saved, and five bodies recovered. An orphaned 5-year-old boy who nearly died of hypothermia was saved in a helicopter rescue, as was a 9-month-old girl named Favour, whose mother died during the voyage.

On Friday, Favour was being flown with social workers from Lampedusa to Palermo, where Mayor Leoluca Orlando was waiting at the airport to pick her up. Favour’s future will be decided by a juvenile court.

“She is so little, I really hope she will be given directly to a family,” he told the Telegraph.

Of the more than 5,000 that arrived in Sicily in 2016, 800 are currently being cared for by the City of Palermo, which has a designated a city social services councilor to oversee their welfare.

“She is the only mamma in Italy with 800 children,” said Mayor Orlando, who has been at the forefront of calls for Europe to do more to provide safe passage.

“When they flee war, Europe does everything to help them, when they flee hunger we do nothing,” said Mr. Orlando, who like many of the mayors across Sicily, has had to open up whole new sections of the city cemetery to bury the hundreds who have died during the crossings. “It is hypocrisy.”

Approximately 10,000 refugees and migrants were rescued this week in the Mediterranean on rickety boats that had departed from Libya.